Tim Heald

Heald was born in Dorchester, Dorset, England, and educated at Sherborne School, Dorset, and Balliol College, Oxford, gaining an MA in Modern History.

He has written over thirty published books, including official biographies of HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (The Duke - a Portrait of Prince Philip (1991), Hodder & Stoughton), and HRH Princess Margaret (Princess Margaret - a Life Unravelled (2007), Orion Books).

Heald is also known for his mystery novels featuring Simon Bognor, special investigator, (10 titles), serialised by Thames TV. More recently as creator of Dr Tudor Cornwall in a new crime trilogy published by Robert Hale Ltd: Death and the Visiting Fellow (2004), Death and the D'Urbervilles (2005), A Death on the Ocean Wave (2007). He recently returned to the newly knighted Simon Bognor and has published two new novels Death in the Opening Chapter and Poison at the Pueblo with Creme de la Crime/ Severn House. He is working on more.

As a journalist, Tim Heald has written for Punch (magazine), The Spectator, The Sunday Times (Atticus column), Daily Express (feature writer 1967-72), The Times, The Daily Telegraph, and is a freelance travel writer. In the autumn of 2009 he started writing a "Royal Blog" for the Daily Telegraph web-site and was appointed Royal Correspondent by the editor of The Lady (a magazine), Rachel Johnson.

As a speaker, he is often a guest on Cunard cruise ships QE2, Caronia. He was the author of Village Cricket (Little Brown, 2004), on which a Carlton TV series was based.

Tim Heald lived in Fowey, Cornwall, for fifteen years but recently moved to south Somerset where his mother was born and his father is buried.